: A July Holiday in Saxony Bohemia and Silesia by White Walter - Bohemia (Czech Republic) Description and travel; Saxony (Germany) Description and travel; Silesia Description and travel

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As there was no help for it, we had another talk, he all the while holding my hand as if fearful I should escape. The burden of his discourse was "a good time coming," mingled, however, with a dread that when it came it would not be half so desirable as the good old times, and between the past and future his life was a torment.

"Whether you shall be miserable or not," I answered, "depends more on yourself than on the rulers of Bohemia. Why should a man grumble who has a house, and food, and land to cultivate? Only carry your enjoyments home instead of consuming them by the way, and cheerfulness will be there to gladden your wife as well as you."

I bade him good-bye, and pursued my walk. Turning round just over the brow of the hill, I saw him still in the same spot, gazing after me. "Farewell, good friend!" he shouted, and strode away.

Half an hour later I came to a road-mender, who told me he earned twenty kreutzers a day, and was quite content therewith. He had a wife and child; never ate meat or drank beer; lived mostly on potatoes, and was, nevertheless, strong and healthy, and by no means inclined to quarrel with his lot. The road was a constant source of employment; and if at times bad weather kept him at home for a day or two, his pay went on all the same.

Every mile brings us more and more among the Czechs. Oval faces and arched eyebrows become more numerous, and women's talk sounds shrill and shrewish, as if angry or quarrelsome, as is remarked of the women in Caernarvonshire; and yet it is nothing more than friendly conversation. To a stranger the language sounds as unmusical as it is difficult; and to learn it--you may as well hope to master Chinese. Czechish names and handbills appear on the walls; the names of villages, with the usual topographical particulars, are written up in German and Czechish, of which behold a specimen:

The hostess, meanwhile, chatted with me and set the table. She professed to admire the English, and thought it an honour that an Englishman had once slept a night in her house, "although he had to look into a book for all he wanted to say." She coincided entirely in the Saxon schoolmaster's opinion, that all best things came from England.

As the clock struck eleven in came half a dozen serving men and maidens, and sat down to dinner with the master and mistress. The dowager supplied them with soup, beef, a mountain of potato-dumplings, and cucumber salad, and ate her portion apart with undoubting appetite. An old beggar crept in and stood hat in hand imploring charity for God's sake! She scolded him for his intrusion, and then gave him a smoking hot dumpling and a word of sympathy, which he received and acknowledged with humble thanks and the sign of the cross.

So with sundry discourse we came to Kruschowitz, where we dined, looking out on thick belts of fruit-trees, that embower the village, and relieve the pale green of little plantations of acacias that show here and there among the bright-red roofs. Most of the houses exhibit the Czechish style, which shuns height and dispenses with an upper story. Then we went on at an after-dinner pace to Rentsch, where, striking into the old road to Prague, now but little frequented, we shortened the distance by four or five miles. All Czechish now, both to eye and ear. A difference is perceptible in the fields, the implements, sheds, and vehicles; they are not so neat or workmanlike in appearance as in the German districts, and yet the broad crops of wheat, already turning yellow, betoken glad abundance.

Glazed windows are few: an opening in the wall, with a hinged shutter, suffices for most of the houses. And for door they have a big archway closed by heavy wooden gates, looking very inhospitable. Here and there one of these gates stands a little open, and you may get a peep at the interior, a square court, enclosed by stable, barn, and dwelling, heaped with manure and ugly rubbish. No notion here, you will say, of the fitness of things. Look at the wagon--a basket on wheels--the wheelbarrow, the rakes, huddled away anyhow, as if they were just as well in one place as another. Perhaps they are. Quaint old Fuller says of the Devonshire cotters of his day, "Vain it is for any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of a sheriff, and above the power of any constable." You will, perhaps, say the same here. Look in-doors! the same slovenliness prevails. The room would be just as comfortable, or rather uncomfortable, if chairs and table changed places; if the higgledy-piggledy at one end were shifted to the other. The condition of the utensils is by no means unimpeachable; and repelled by the pervading odour, you will not be less thankful than proud that your lot is not cast among the Czechs.

A Talk with the Landlord -- A Jew's Offer -- A Ride in a Wagen -- Talk with the Jew -- The Stars -- A Mysterious Gun-barrel -- An Alarm -- Stony Ammunition -- The Man with the Gun -- The Jew's opinion of him -- Sunrise -- A Walk -- The White Hill -- A Fatal Field -- Waking up in the Suburbs -- Early Breakfasts -- Imperial and Royal Tobacco -- Milk-folk -- The Gate of Prague -- A Snappish Sentry -- The Soldiers -- Into the City -- Picturesque Features and crowding Associations -- The Kleinseite -- The Bridge -- Palaces -- The Altstadt -- Remarkable Streets -- The Teinkirche -- The Neustadt -- The Three Hotels.

The landlord came in a few minutes afterwards, and, to encourage me to tell him all he wished to know about myself, declared himself a German. That he should ever have been so stupid as to tempt fortune at Neu Straschitz was a mistake haunting and vexing him continually. A living was not to be got in such a miserable village, and among such miserable people, and he meant to migrate as soon as he could find some one more stupid than himself to take the inn off his hands.

I had seen two or three German names in the street, and asked him if they were of long standing. "Not very." And he went on to say that the Stock-Bohemians, as the Czechs are called, are perpetually encroached on, pressed within narrower limits by the German element. Though a good deal was said about Czechish vigour and intellectuality, some folk thought that the language would at no distant day cease to be spoken. As for the character of the Czechs, there was scarcely a German who did not believe them to be sly, false, double-faced. And what says the proverb?--Dirt is the offspring of Lying and Idleness. For his part, he knew the Czechs were dirty, but he didn't quite know whether, in other respects, they were worse than their neighbours. Any way, he rather liked the thought of removing from among them.

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